East Magazine

From EAST magazine: An Excerpt From Amanda M. Fairbanks’s "The Lost Boys of Montauk: The True Story of the Wind Blown and the Four Men Who Vanished at Sea and the Survivors They Left Behind."

Cat burglars stole $375K in jewels from the tenor’s house in 1920.

HE WORKS OBSESSIVELY every night, often till the sun comes over his compound: the farthest-out home on Long Island’s South Fork. Hours later, after a restless sleep, Peter Beard walks out to the edge of the bluff, sits on a boulder, and watches the birds wheel and keen over the sea. “I always feel better,” he says, “when I’ve done a bit of this.”

An action list for every household on the East End. Because, duh!, it’s time to take personal responsibility for the climate emergency

Michael Combs was going to be a plumber, or perhaps work on a New York City tugboat, like his dad. He was learning plumbing in high school in the 1980s in Greenport, and a skill in the trades promised job security and income. He’d grown up among baymen, market gunners, and hunting guides — hunters, foragers, and fishermen, many of whom were also, by need and nature, artists: decoy-carvers, lure-makers, self-sufficient men and women who could fix or build most anything. Young Combs watched and learned.

Every Tuesday, hundreds of people snake into the East Hampton Food Pantry’s small building off Pantigo Road to receive their share from tables laden with fresh fruits and vegetables, frozen chopped venison and other meats, milk, and baked goods. This scene is repeated at some nine food pantries from Hampton Bays to Montauk that feed upward of 3,000 people a week.

Gigging (or spearfishing) — a primordial method for nabbing eels and all sorts of other briny creatures — requires no special skills and just a few basic pieces of equipment. David Gibbons tries his hand with Kerry Heffernan, the celebrated chef, as guide.

Editor’s Note: To protect the identity and privacy of individuals the author knew when he was involved in the group in question, members’ names have been changed. East reached out to Sharon Gans and the School, but they declined to comment.

Let’s all raise a glass to the Sunfish, that nearly ubiquitous icon of the American shoreline, a single-sail fiberglass boat that has glided, bounced, carried young love, and, often, flipped across lakes, harbors, and bays since the early 1950s.

East Hampton Village, 8:30 A.M. — Patricia ‘Pat’ Ryan makes her way down Dayton Lane, gently tugging on the thin red leash of her 14-year-old Cocker Spaniel, Lucy, who trots happily beside her. It’s a bright June morning and she is on her way to pick up a copy of The East Hampton Star, as he has every Thursday for almost fifty years. 

When was the last time you had something fixed? Reupholstered a chair? Brought a dress to be hemmed? Had an old stereo rewired? To someone born after 1985, these efforts can feel antiquated, effortful, slow. The kinds of chore we might think about but will never really get around to doing — like getting car tires rotated. We know we should, but it’s just not that pressing. Who has the time? And where would you even go?

When a crowd gathers for the commencement of an event greater than itself, something like magic happens.  The relighting of the old Sag Harbor Cinema sign this past Memorial Day weekend was such a moment. So was the clear April day in 2007 when onlookers lined Pantigo Road to watch several 18th-century buildings carried down the road on trucks to become East Hampton’s  new Town Hall. These gatherings tend to evoke another era, when commemorations and celebrations were more abundant, from the moon landings to bicentennial parades of tall ships in harbors.